Results:

• About 25% of the participants “recalled” the false memory.
  However, they also ranked this memory as less confident than the other memories and they wrote less about the memory on their questionnaire.
• Although this is often seen as strong evidence of the power of suggestion in creating false memories, only 25% had them. The study does not tell us why some participants were more susceptible to these memories than others.
  

Aim: to determine if false memories of autobiographical or personal events can be created through the power of suggestion. In other words, we create false memories of a personal event?

Debriefing:

• After the second interview, participants were debriefed. And asked if they could guess which of the memories were false.
• They were asked if they could identify which of the memories was the false memory.
  

Confidence Rating:

• Participants were asked to rate their level of confidence about each memory on a scale of 1 - 10.
  

Interviews:

• Participants were interviewed twice over a four-week period.
• During the interviews, they were asked to recall as much information as possible about the four events.
  

Questionnaire Sent by Mail:

• Participants received a questionnaire in the mail.
• They were instructed to write about the four memories.
• One of the memories was "getting lost in the mall."
• Participants were told to write "I do not remember this" if they couldn't recall an event.
• The completed questionnaire was then mailed back to the psychologists.
  

Contacting Family Member:

• Before the study, a parent or sibling of the participant was contacted.
• Two questions were asked: Retell three childhood memories of the participant? Do you remember a time when the participant was lost in a mall?
  

Aim: The aim of the research was to investigate whether the use of leading questions would affect estimation of speed.

Participants: 45 students divided into 5 groups of 9 students

Procedure:

• 45 students participated in the experiment. They were divided into five groups of nine students.

  
  

• Seven films of traffic accidents were shown and the length of the films ranged from 5 to 30 seconds. (These films were taken from driver’s education films.)

  
  

• When the participants had watched a film they were asked to give an account of the accident they and seen and then they answered a questionnaire with different questions on the accident with one question being the critical question where they were asked to estimate the speed of the cars involved in the accident.

  
  

• The participants were asked to estimate the speed of the cars.

  
  

• They were asked the same question but the critical question included different words. Nine participants were asked, “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?" The critical word "hit’" was replaced by ‘collided’, ‘bumped’ or ‘smashed’ or’ contacted’ in the other groups.

  
  

• The independent variable was the different words used in the critical question and the dependent variable was estimation of speed.

  
  

Results:

• When using the verb smashed, the mean speed estimate was 40.8mph.

  
  

• When using the verb collided, the mean speed estimate was 39.3mph.

  
  

• When using the verb bumped, the mean speed estimate was 38.1mph.

  
  

• When using the verb hit, the mean speed estimate was 34.0mph.

  
  

• When using the verb contacted, the mean speed estimate was 31.8mph.

  
  
  
  

• The results of this experiment can be interpreted in terms of Bartlett’s theory of reconstructive memory, i.e. people tend to change details of an event when they try to remember it.
  

Aim: The aim of the experiment was to investigate if participants who had a high speed estimate in the first part of an experiment would say that they had seen broken glass in the second part of the experiment.

Participants: 150 students divided into groups of different sizes.

Procedure:

• They were shown a 1-minute film depicting a multiple car accident lasting around 4 seconds.
• After seeing the film the participants answered a questionnaire. - - First they described the accident in their own words, and then they had to answer a number of other questions.
• Fifty participants were asked:" About how fast were the cars going then they smashed into each other?”
• Fifty participants were asked:” About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”
• The remaining fifty participants were not asked to estimate speed.
• After one week the participants came back to the laboratory to answer some questions about the accident.
  -There was one critical question in a list of a total of 10 questions and it was placed randomly in the list in the questionnaire.
• The critical question was:” Did you see any broken glass?” The participants simply had to answer “yes” or “no”. There was no broken glass in the accident the participants had seen but the researchers assumed that broken glass was associated with high speed.
  
  

Results:
Mean speed estimates:
Smashed - 10.46mph
Hit - 8.00 mph

Did you see any broken glass?:
Group 1 (Smashed) - 16 yes , 34 no
Group 2 (Hit) - 7 yes, 43 no
Control Group - 6 yes, 44 no

The results of this experiment can be interpreted in terms of Bartlett’s theory of reconstructive memory, i.e. people tend to change details of an event when they try to remember it. The participants may have used their past knowledge of serious car accidents to make the decision of whether or not they had seen broken glass (schema processing).

Aim: To have a better understanding of why the victim was so convinced that Ronald Cotton was her rapist

Procedure:

• The rapist broke into her house while she was sleeping. A knife was put to her throat. She offered him valuable material items but that wasn’t what he wanted.
• She vowed to stay alert and study the man while he was raping her so that if she survived, she would be able to convict him.
• She was able to escape through the backdoor by pretending she was gonna fix him a drink.
• The man fled and raped a second woman half a mile away.
• Detective Michael Gauldin met her at the hospital and helped make a composite sketch.
• Anonymous tip went out on how it could be Ronald Cotton due to his past criminal record and how he worked near the two areas of rape.
• 3 days after, they did a photographic lineup where she studied photographs that were shown of the potential man who raped her, specificaly two men, one being Ronald Cotton for 5 minutes.
• Ronald Cotton was called in by the police after Jenifer accused him of being the rapist.
• He got his weekends confused which led them to believe he was making a false alibi.
• He was locked up and put in a line up. Jenifer truly believed that it was him.
• Ronald Cotton was found guilty on all accounts and was sentenced to life. His conviction was based primarily on the eyewitness identification of Jenifer Thompson.
• He was sent to prison and continuously emailed his attorney hoping to get a new trial.
• Bobby Poole was sent to the same jail and greatly resembled Ronald.
• It was rumored that bobby admitted to the rape against Jenifer and Ronald and Bobby were brought to court.
• Jenifer still believed it was Ronald and he was sentenced to 2 sentences of life.
• After the OJ Simpson's case, Ronald found out about DNA and wanted to test because he knew he was innocent. He was warned but still went through with it.
• There was evidence found through the sperm dna that it wasn’t Ronald and in fact, Bobby Poole.
• He was finally released after 11 years of his life.
• Ronald met with Jenifer and forgave him at a church.
  

Results: Ronald Cotton was wrongfully convicted, this demonstrated how memories are subject to distortion and errors in memory can have serious consequences

• Misidentification is the leading factor to wrongful conviction.
• Research shows that memory is highly malleable and that an eye witness who is uncertain can become much more certain over time.
• Reasons for wrongful conviction could be that: Jenifer received positive feedback for guessing Ronald Cotton after the image lineup. In the physical lineup Ronald Cotton was the only repeat person from the images.
• They have now changed the way they lineup by doing a process called the double administration of lineups (the officer is not aware who the suspect is and the witness is told that the officer doesn’t know the identity if the suspect)